I love things like this. For targeted applications it certainly could be fun to mess around with. But I'd note that it would unlikely make a very good general purpose HTPC ... it (on passing glance) only accels h.264 video ... I'm thinking that even a DVD (standard def. mpeg2) would present it some considerable challenges.

Some other quickly thought of shortcomings (coming from the perspective of wanting a general purpose unit) would be its limitations of 100mbit network and usb2 (usb3 would definitely improve storage performance aspects/considerations)

Actually, the Cubox has an appeal as well, both it and Raspberry can handle XBMC.http://www.solid-run.com/products/cubox
Although the chipset from Rhombus looks better, and should be cheaper and more powerful ( $15 ).

Actually, the Cubox has an appeal as well, both it and Raspberry can handle XBMC.http://www.solid-run.com/products/cubox
Although the chipset from Rhombus looks better, and should be cheaper and more powerful ( $15 ).

- a user comment in the Phoronix forums that I found interesting: "Raspberry Pi has had about 3 stories a day show up on Slashdot for about the last year. The level of hype has outstripped the actual device. While it looks like a nice, low-power board that could be handy in many cases, the Raspberry Pi is not the pure-open source Windows/iPhone/Apple killer that the hype machine has portrayed. ": http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...148#post249148

That user comment is probably over critical, but it strikes me that there is an element of truth to what he is saying. Anyway, now back to your regularly scheduled programming ...

I can't really see that thing making a good HTPC replacement. In fact, I really can't figure out what the heck it'd be useful for. Therefore, I'll only be buying one or two of 'em until I do figure it out.

Raspberry Pi has confirmed the first batch of $35 PCs will be constructed on February 20. They've also coaxed Broadcom into releasing the datasheet for the board. Apparently the company hit a snag with the quartz crystal package so there was a manufacturing delay, but it's since been resolved and things are on schedule for later this month.

- a user comment in the Phoronix forums that I found interesting: "Raspberry Pi has had about 3 stories a day show up on Slashdot for about the last year. The level of hype has outstripped the actual device. While it looks like a nice, low-power board that could be handy in many cases, the Raspberry Pi is not the pure-open source Windows/iPhone/Apple killer that the hype machine has portrayed. ": http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...148#post249148

That user comment is probably over critical, but it strikes me that there is an element of truth to what he is saying. Anyway, now back to your regularly scheduled programming ...

While I'm excited for something like this I also agree with the hype.

I wish they went more into detail on what it will play before the release. I guess I'll have to wait for consumers to be the Guinea pigs..

"The Raspberry Pi Fedora Remix is ready for download! The recommended distro to run on the Raspberry Pi is a Remix of the Fedora open source software. The Remix is a distribution comprised of software packages from the Fedora ARM project, plus a small number of additional packages that are modified from the Fedora versions or which cannot be included in Fedora due to licensing issues - in particular, the libraries for accessing the VideoCore GPU on the Raspberry Pi."

a user comment in the Phoronix forums that I found interesting: "Raspberry Pi has had about 3 stories a day show up on Slashdot for about the last year. The level of hype has outstripped the actual device."... it strikes me that there is an element of truth to what he is saying

We received a Model B ($35), which is powered by a Broadcom BCM2835 SoC that includes a 700MHz ARM1176JZF-S CPU core, 256MB of RAM and a Broadcom VideoCore IV GPU with OpenGL ES 2.0 that supports 1080p at 30FPS as well as H.264 and MPEG-4 high-profile decoding for smooth Blu-ray playback. Connectivity includes two USB ports, Ethernet, HDMI, RCA video, an SD card slot, a 3.5mm audio jack and two rows of 13 General Purpose Input/Output (GPIO) pins for further expansion.

The Model A ($25, to be released at a later date) ships without Ethernet and has a single USB port. Both models measure 85.60mm x 53.98mm x 17mm, although the SD card and connectors overlap the PCB board edges. Besides the Raspberry Pi itself, you'll also need various other items before you can configure and use the device:

5v micro-USB power adapter with at least 700mA (many micro-USB phone chargers work).
SD card, or micro-SD card in an adapter, with the OS preloaded (4GB to 32GB recommended).
USB keyboard and mouse (PS/2 to USB adapters might work, but we haven't tested this).
Powered USB hub if you intend to have more than two USB devices connected.
Display or TV with HDMI, DVI, Composite or SCART.
Ethernet cable.

The APC computer is a $49 Android system based on the brand new Neo-ITX form factor which measures in at roughly half the size of standard Mini-ITX based motherboards. It features an 800MHz ARM SOC (VIA WonderMedia ARM 11 SoC) with 512MB of DDR3 memory and 2GB of onboard flash memory for storage. A modified version of Google Android 2.3 uses up most of that 2GB of flash storage, but there are external storage options. On the back I/O is a microSD slot and of course you could hook in an external USB 2.0 drive. VIA spent a lot of time customizing Android to enable keyboard and mouse support which natively it does not support. The system also comes with the modified apps such as a YouTube player, Angry Birds, a file manager, web browser and more.

However, the VIA APC is not designed to be about local storage. It is designed to stream your content from the cloud and does so at an amazing price and within a very tiny footprint. The APC will fit in normal Mini-ITX cases with room to spare for something like a 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch hard drive. On the I/O panel you get VGA output, HDMI output (up to 720p playback with hardware acceleration), four USB 2.0 ports, gigabit LAN and audio out and microphone in.

There is not much on the motherboard / computer itself. There is just the few chips required to power the system along with a four pin fan header if you wish to add a cooling fan to the system, but it does not require it and enables a completely silent system. One of the other amazing aspects of this system is that at load it only consumes 13.5 watts of power and hardly anything at idle coming in at just 4 watts. The system will ship with just a small 15 watt external power supply.

VIA expects to start shipping the APC, "a bicycle for your mind", towards the end of June or sometime in July for just $49. The other big news is that VIA will be selling the APC directly on http://www.apc.io. Pre-orders will begin very soon. For a closer look at the Nano-ITX Neo-ITX APC, watch the video above.

The SoC provides OpenGL ES 2.0, hardware-accelerated OpenVG and 1080p HD video. As you can see from the above specification, the Raspberry Pi does not have onboard wireless capabilities, but it is possible to use a USB-connected wifi dongle, although only some devices are supported. Neither does the Raspberry Pi have a real time clock. Given that the machine will typically be connected to the internet, this is not an inconvenience and provides a cost saving. Further, if a real time clock is really needed, a third-party battery backed up real time clock module for the Raspberry Pi should be available very soon.

It is easy to overclock both the CPU, RAM, and GPU of the Raspberry Pi by editing a single text file (/boot/config.txt), although this activity voids the warranty. Some users have reported speed increases of about 20%, without apparently affecting the stability of the machine.